“As someone who has written extensively about the formative power of "secular liturgies," you might think I'd be primed to analyze the opening ceremonies of the 2012 London Olympics as an example of just such a "secular" liturgy. In other words, you might think I'd be sympathetic to George Weigel's critical analysis of the opening ceremonies as "The Liturgy of the World State."

But you'd be wrong. Indeed, I think Weigel's account of the opening ceremony as a "liturgy" betrays a pre-Vatican II notion of the liturgy as spectacle, as something to be observed (rather than something inviting "full, conscious, active participation" as the reforms of Sacrosanctum Concilium emphasized)…”

The second is via Steve Taylor (and the link he made to another persons blog) – you’ll find Steve’s post and his link here.

Sunday, 29 July 2012

“…Did we become Christians then, my brothers, in order to avoid failure or to achieve success? Is that why we have enrolled with Christ, and presented our foreheads to receive this great sign? You are a Christian. You carry the cross of Christ on your forehead. This mark teaches you what it is that you confess. While he was hanging on the cross—the cross you carry on your forehead; it doesn’t inspire you as a symbol of the wood, but as a symbol of him hanging on it—to repeat, while he was hanging on the cross, he looked at the violent people around him, he put up with their insults, he prayed for his enemies. He was a doctor—even while he was being put to death, he was healing the sick with his own blood, by saying, ‘Father forgive them, for they know not what they do’ (Lk 23.34) . . . So learn from this sign, my brothers, learn from the mark that the Christian receives even when he becomes a catechumen—learn from this why we are Christians. It is not for the sake of temporary or short-lived things, whether good or bad. It is in order to avoid evils that will never pass away, and to acquire goods that will never come to an end…”

—Augustine, “Sermon 302: On the Feast of St. Lawrence”

The picture accompanying this post is a very arresting portrait by Philippe de Champaigne, 17th century

Thursday, 26 July 2012

As I talk to people, one of the many “cages” they often find themselves “trapped” in is that of unforgiveness. For some it’s their own unwillingness to forgive, while for others it is their not being forgiven, not being given the love, space and opportunity to grow and change – they’re forever trapped in the past.

While not the whole picture, Marianne Williamson is nonetheless helpful when she writes:

“… Forgiveness is the choice to see people as they are now. When we are angry at people, we are angry because of something they said or did before this moment. But what people said or did is not who they are. Relationships are reborn as we let go perceptions of [that person’s]. ‘By bringing the past into the present, we create a future just like the past’ [; people who can only ever be what they were in the past]. By letting the past go, we make room for miracles…”

- Marianne Williamson, A Return to Love: Reflections on the Principles of A Course of Miracles, p. 96.

Wednesday, 25 July 2012

I was recently listening to a radio interview with Sr. Sue Cosgrove, formerly of Jerusalem / Hiruharama on the Whanganui River, New Zealand (a place I have visited only once) and I wanted to record what Sister Sue described as the “philosophy of life” of 95-year old nun Sr. Anna Maria Shortall, also, until recently a member of the community at Jerusalem.

“Live in the reality of the moment, and do it lovingly…”

- Sister Anna Maria, Sister’s of Compassion, New Zealand.

You’ll find the podcast of the 12th July interview here. Details of the documentary mentioned in the interview – How Far is Heaven – can be found here.

An aside - A moment of serendipity (in relations to living “in the reality of the moment”) was this post (Moot Community, London) on “mindfulness” (a practice that has become more important to me over the last 2-3 years), which I read not long after listening the interview and being struck by Sr. Anna Maria’s philosophy of life.

Being “open” and interested inevitably takes one on a journey of discovery with others of diverse and overlapping perspective and life experience. Life becomes both rich and deep. Questions become more needful than answers. More a source of hope and life. More the “building blocks” of our becoming more fully and deeply human.

Or, as Roger Housden has reflected, in another context, the diverse people with whom we journey through life (whether embodied or virtual vis-à-vis their books, movies etc) remind us “there is no escape from the dark corners of another human being. There is no escape from the mirror another casts on my own sorry state”, nor we on theirs. “It summons into awareness”, Housden continues, “the fears, the resentments, the disillusion, the sheer difficulty that comes with the fact of being human.”

Berry writes:

“…We should abandon the idea that this world and our human life in it can be brought by science to some sort of mechanical perfection or predictability. We are creatures whose intelligence and knowledge are not invariably equal to our circumstances. The radii of knowledge have only pushed back – and enlarged – the circumstance of mystery. We live in a world famous for its ability both to surprise us and to deceive us. We are prone to err, ignorantly or foolishly or intentionally or maliciously. One of the oddest that it us is the interdependency of our virtues and our faults. Our moral code depends on our shortcomings as much as our knowledge. It is only when we confess our ignorance that we can see our need for “the law and the prophets”. It is only because we err and are ignorant that we make promises, which we keep, not because we are smart, but because we are faithful…”(p.135).

Berry writes, “…The dominant story of our age, undoubtedly, is that of adultery and divorce. This is true both literally and figuratively: the dominant tendency of our age is the breaking apart of faith and the making of divisions among things that once were joined…” (p. 133).

And having read the complete argument of his book, the context within which these quotes need to be read, I think he’s right on so many levels.

As Stanley Hauerwas reflects (following on from yesterday’s post): “…We rarely become good by trying to be good, but rather goodness “rides on the back” of worthwhile activity…” i.e. commitments, practices and virtues (skills) c.f. Hauerwas, Performing the Faith, p. 160. Morality can never be divorced from determinative practices. Goodness and activity are “joined” in the sense that Berry (above) laments as largely absent in today’s world dominated as it is by the story that is “adultery and divorce”. It’s the air we breathe!

Saturday, 21 July 2012

With a little bit of time up my sleeve due to sleeplessness, I took the time to read the following January 2010 post (by Halden Doerge) and the long string of comments, most particularly those by Nate Kerr, Charlie Collier, Stephen Keating, Dan Barber, and D. Stephen Long.

Here’s the opening section of Halden’s post:

“In the final chapter of With the Grain of the Universe, [Stanley] Hauerwas reaches something of an apogee in stating his view of the importance of the church’s witness in relation to the truthfulness of the Christian message:

Does the truth of Christian convictions depend on the faithfulness of the church and, if so, how do we determine what would constitute faithfulness? Am I suggesting that the ability of the church to be or not to be nonviolent is constitutive for understanding what it might meant [sic] to claim that that Christian convictions are true? Do I think the truthfulness of Christian witness is compromised when Christians accept the practices of the “culture of death” — abortion, suicide, capital punishment, and war?

Yes! On every count the answer is “Yes.” (Hauerwas, p. 231)

Meditate long and hard on what’s being said here. As far as I can tell Hauerwas is saying outright that the truth of Christianity, the truth of the gospel depends on the church’s own faithfulness. This, to me seems like a crazy statement. Its one thing to say that we have no way to talk about the gospel’s truth apart from listening to witnesses (whether they be apostolic witnesses, historical witness, or ecclesial witnesses). But it is quite another to say that the truth of the gospel depends on us being nonviolent…”

To quote one of those who left a comment, I find [the Hauerwas quote, above] “not only unobjectionable but most certainly correct”.

And out of interest, the excerpt Halden quotes above (from the chapter titled The Necessity of Witness), continues (immediately) with Hauerwas further suggesting:

"Moreover, if I am right there is a way to respond to the challenge that the argument is hopelessly circular. Christian's betray the grammar of the Christian faith when we try to answer the charge of circularity by divorcing what we believe from the way our beliefs are embdedded in our lives and, more important, from the way our lives are embedded in the church. In short I am suggesting that Christians in modernity have lost the ability to answer questions about the truthfulness of what we believe because we have accepted beliefs about the world that presuppose that God does not matter. The problem for Christians and non-Christians alike is the Christian inability to live in a way that enables us to articulate what difference it makes that we are or are not Christian..." [italics, mine - Paul].

And he goes on, reminding me that pulling texts out of their context from within a much more complex and nuanced arument, and indeed much more complex and nuanced corpus of work risky, but then that's one of the blessings and curses of blogging.

Monday, 16 July 2012

Recently I highlighted an interview / conversation with Psychotherapist John Welwood. He had some interesting comments to make with regard to the relationship between “psychology” and “spirituality”. I liked the notion of the two being “braided”, interrelated – mutually needful. I wanted to record it for further reflection:

Tami Simon: Well you know it’s interesting, John, because as we’re talking, you keep weaving together psychological approaches and, we could say, more quote-unquote “spiritual” approaches and of course, you know, your work. This is one of the things that you’re most well known for and so respected that you bring these two together, and I’m curious—is there a metaphor for you about how the psychological and the spiritual work together? Is it a braid, that they fit inextricably into one, or how do you see it?

John Welwood: I see it as like absolute and relative in some way. I’m sure I have some metaphors I can’t think of [laughs] but . . .

TS: Well tell us what you mean by that—absolute and relative?

JW: Well, sort of like spirituality is working with who we ultimately are and letting that be discovered and letting that permeate our lives. So it’s the absolute—our absolute true nature, our essential nature, which is ultimately the same in all of us. It could be called “third nature” or whatever we want to call it. But psychological work is more working with our relative nature—it’s more working with the conditioned self. So the spiritual work is working with the unconditioned self and unconditioned nature.

I think the problem with spirituality, spiritual work, is not including psychological work. It often can be in the sense of a spiritual bypass where people are unfolding their ultimate nature but they’re not actually dealing with their relative unresolved psychological issues, and that’s really problematic in our culture. On the other hand, you could get totally fixated on your conditioned nature and working with that forever, because that’s like, there’s always more to unpack and digest and it’s much more beneficial to actually do the psychological work. What I do is from a spiritual perspective; the psychological work in the service of spiritual development—that’s kind of the way I work. So I see them as working hand-in-hand. One is working with our relative issues, especially— “relative” here is an interesting word because it’s related to “relationship.” …

… TS: Now, John, I’m completely with you in terms of the value of psychological work and the value of spiritual work—we need them both. But I’m curious: you made a comment that I would like to ask you about, which is you said that your focus is psychological work seen in the service of spiritual work. What do you mean by that? Is spiritual work at some kind of preeminence here?

JW: Yes, I would give it [preeminence] but it’s not just about working out your issues and digesting your material from the past. That would be the traditional use of psychotherapy and so forth—is just to sort of heal yourself and heal your past in a certain way— the past that still lives in you, in your body, which is good and important to do. But I think it adds another dimension to see, to actually hold that work in the service of—we’re doing this work of unpacking the self, this relative self, and healing these wounds in the service of being able to completely open up to life and … the whole of reality—and to actually cultivate our ultimate openness, because we lose our openness in childhood in relationship.

That’s the key, that’s the really important point here, in a way, is that through relationship we lose our openness, lose contact with our openness and have to shut down, and so psychological work is a relational activity, it’s a dialogical activity. It happens through relationship to another person. So actually, we can learn to become open to another person, to the psychotherapist, to the person that’s working with you.

Then you have to learn to be open to yourself through that process. But that’s good, that’s one level, but the next level, in the service of spiritual development, would be that this is in the service of opening up completely to all situations and all aspects of life—which is, I think, the ultimate nature of the spiritual journey, is to completely open more and more and more and more, and finally open to death and who knows what happens after death? We have to keep opening in some sense beyond that—I don’t know. But that’s the propulsion of the spiritual path…”

Saturday, 14 July 2012

Roger Housden concludes his reflection on “Writing and the Inner Life” with the following paragraph:

“…At the heart of writing and the inner life is the quest for truth and truthfulness; the spiraling down deeper and deeper into the subtleties of your experience so that the experience itself may surprise you with unimagined revelations and insights. A good place to start is with those images that have lived on in your mind and imagination for decades, and that unknown to you, may have helped to shape who you are. This is what I call a shimmering image, a phrase that I borrowed from the writer Lisa Dale Norton. And shimmering images are what I encourage people to recover in my classes, as part of the difficult and exhilarating process of bringing one’s interior life out onto the page.”

Friday, 13 July 2012

In case you missed it, 44-year-old Anglican Priest Justin Duckworth was installed as the Anglican Bishop of Wellington on 30th June 2012.

“…On a freezing cold Wellington afternoon, Justin Duckworth and his trademark bare feet are ascending to one of Anglican Church's most revered roles.

And inside Wellington's Saint Paul's Cathedral, 1600 faithful gather to see him ordained as a bishop.

Mr Duckworth is a man who has spent much of his life working to help the needy and those who live in the margins of society.

“I've got to be honest, I probably felt more comfortable there yesterday at Rimutaka Jail than I do here. I confess that now that you have made me a bishop, because it's too late for you to pull out,” he jokes…”

And you’ll get to see Andrew Jones, The Tall Skinny Kiwi, make a few comments.

Justin, and Jenny his wife co-wrote a really interesting little book in the New Monastic Library series (resources for Radical Discipleship) published by Cascade Books with a foreword by Charles Ringma. The title is: Against the Tide, Towards the Kingdom.

“…Against the Tide, Towards the Kingdom is the story of the Urban Vision community in New Zealand. This book recounts the story of a group of young Christian adults who over the last fifteen years have relocated to the colorful ends of their city to share life with those who are struggling, homeless, sick, poor, neglected, or otherwise marginalized. The community has grown over time to seven neighborhoods where on any given day you may find "Urban Visionites" growing vegetables amidst the concrete, teaching English to refugees, offering alternative education programs to out of school teenagers, fostering children, doing church with the homeless, offering friendship to the mentally ill, roasting fair trade coffee, running kids clubs, moms groups, tenant meetings or just sharing yet another cup of tea with their neighbors. In fact sharing is a good summary of the whole shape of this exciting movement. They share homes, food, money, vehicles, jobs, prayers, dreams, conversations, fun, tears, pain, hope, healing, transformation . . . they share the whole of life with each other and with their neighbors. They live the gospel, this good news of Jesus…”

Plus, an interesting article in NZ’s Anglican Taonga online ‘magazine’ – Back to the Community - Everyday. Great to see the campaign "Back to Church Sunday" dropped!